I watched the final out of the World Series this week and found myself pulling hard for a team I had never once rooted for.

The Milwaukee Brewers.

Growing up in Brooklyn, the Brewers lived somewhere off the edge of my map. A small market. A franchise that had never won it all.

And yet there I was, on my couch, rooting for them like I had grown up a few blocks from their ballpark.

It turned out to be one of the more enjoyable playoff runs that I can remember.

But why?

A Tortured Fan

To explain it, I have to start with my own team.

Being born and raised in Brooklyn handed me two inheritances I never asked for. The Jets on Sundays. The Mets all summer. Two teams that have spent most of my life finding new ways to break my heart.

But the Mets always had one thing I loved, even in the losing years.

They felt like a family.

Over the last several seasons, a core of players came up through the organization together. Drafted by the Mets. Developed in the Mets system. Brought up to Queens to grow into big leaguers in front of the same fans who watched them arrive.

Two years ago, that group came within two wins of the World Series. You could feel the chemistry through the television screen.

Then this past winter, the front office took it apart.

The longest-tenured players were traded away or allowed to walk. In their place came big names on big contracts. The payroll climbed past $350 million, second highest in the game.

People told me to relax. These are great players, they said. We could win this thing.

I saw it differently. And I'll be honest..., even if they had won, I'm not sure it would have felt the same.

They finished in last place. Their first full season in the cellar since 2003.

What I felt all year was close to disgust. The kind that comes from watching culture, chemistry and leadership get traded away for the promise of a quick win.

A win that was never guaranteed in the first place.

A Bunch of Gamers

Which brings me back to Milwaukee.

A year ago, the Brewers were swept out of the National League Championship Series by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Four games and done.

This October, they met the Dodgers again. The two-time defending champions, chasing a third straight title. By the time four teams were left standing, Los Angeles was paying its players more than the other three clubs combined.

Milwaukee's payroll sat around $146 million. Nineteenth in the league.

The Brewers swept them.

No team in history had ever returned that favor the very next postseason.

They did it the old way. Singles. Smart baserunning. Defense that took hits away. Pitching that refused to give in. They fell behind in game after game and kept answering, opening the postseason with six comeback wins in their first eight games.

After the final out in Los Angeles, their manager, Pat Murphy, put it in one line.

"They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we have a bunch of gamers."

Then they beat the Tampa Bay Rays, another club working with one of the smallest budgets in baseball, to win the first championship in franchise history.

I watched them celebrate. The emotion. The care. The way they talked about each other.

And I understood why I had been rooting for them.

They were doing it the right way.

What the Memories Are Made Of

I know some people would say a ring is a ring. The Dodgers won two of them the last two years, and those count. Winning at that level is hard however you build it.

But I keep wondering what the memories are made of.

Twenty years from now, this Brewers team will remember the night they were three outs from a title in Game 4 and lost it in the twelfth inning. And they will remember walking back onto that field the very next day and finishing it together.

That memory belongs to all of them.

I wonder how deeply a championship gets savored when the roster was assembled to buy it. I honestly don't know. Maybe the Dodgers would tell me it feels exactly the same.

But I just can't shake the feeling that some trophies weigh more than others.

The Shortcut

This is bigger than baseball.

The same temptation lives in every boardroom, every campaign, every organization with a deadline and a number to hit.

Buy the star. Skip the build. Take the short-term win and trust the culture to sort itself out later.

It rarely does.

Chemistry gets built slowly. In small moments. In the reps nobody sees. In people learning, over time, that the person beside them will be there when it goes wrong. It takes patience. It takes leaders willing to protect it when every pressure in the room says spend.

And the shortcut, even when it works, costs you something you may never get back.

So if you are in the middle of the slow build right now...,

Developing people when it would be easier to replace them. Protecting a culture while someone above you asks why it isn't producing faster. Choosing the long way because you believe in what it creates.

You are allowed to keep building.

It may cost you a season. It may take a sweep in one October to set up the one that follows. I can't promise you the timeline.

What I can tell you is what I felt this week, watching a team I had no reason to care about become a team I couldn't stop rooting for.

They made the long way look worth it.

And I think you already know it is.

The way a team treats each other never stays in the clubhouse. It follows every one of those players home, to the people waiting for them. That's the idea at the heart of Leadership at the Dinner Table. The office always comes home. So does the clubhouse.

With Absolute Sincerity,

Ed Clementi,

Founder & CEO of Inspired Fire

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